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hugged Strider, who laid his nose against my neck. I continued to watch the Olympics, but my thoughts were in Cholame.

September 24
    Mom and I haven’t been getting along as well as we used to. Maybe we are both worried about Dad, or maybe this shack is so small we are getting in each other’s hair. Even though I outgrew my pants, she forgets I’m not a little kid any longer. She is always after me about something, especially about taking our washing to the laundromat, a job I hate and postpone until our laundry practically ferments. She says doing what is expected of me without complaining is a sign of maturity. Yeah, yeah. What about longer pants as a sign of maturity?
    If some landlord ever had an attack of kindness and rented us a two-bedroom apartment, it might have a laundry room in the basement, where the whole world couldn’t see me with our washing.
    I admire Mom, even when she’s mad at me, and I know she loves me. I’m not so sure about Dad, who never gets mad at me. Maybe he doesn’t care enough. We haven’t heard from him since he called about his breakdown. I picture him sitting alone on a dusty road beside a double trailer-load of tomatoes beginning to smell like old catsup.

September 26
    Today was a real shocker. This evening, while Mom was at work and I was studying, Dad telephoned with more news. He has lost his rig! After he had the tractor transmission replaced, he had to admit he couldn’t pay for it until after the tomato season and that he was a month behind in his payments to the bank. The repair people kept the keys, settled with the bank, and now they have the tractor and Dad doesn’t. Boom! Just like that.
    Now all Dad has to drive is a beat-up pickup truck.
    He towed his house-trailer he had used as home base from Bakersfield to Salinas, where he has a temporary job pumping gas until something better turns up. He said he wanted to be closer to us, something I never expectedto hear him say. Nothing was said about support payments, and it wasn’t the time to ask. He sounded so discouraged and sort of ashamed that I feel terrible.
    Dad without his rig! The first time I saw him drive it, I thought he was the biggest, strongest man in the world, and nothing could ever happen to him.

September 30
    In English we finished studying The Rime of the Ancient Mariner , about an old sailor who corners a wedding guest and makes him listen to a long story about shooting an albatross, thereby placing a curse on his ship. It was a pretty good poem except Ms. Habis-Jones made us pick it to pieces.
    Today she said, “Now we are going to write, write, write.”
    The boy behind me whispered, “Rah, rah, rah.” She glared.
    At first I thought she was going to make us write essays on such topics as the mariner’s motivation in shooting the albatross. Maybe she doesn’t really like the poem because, instead of some bird-related treatise, she told us to write a paragraph on any subject and to pay special attention to the topic sentence.
    I thought about The Rime of the Ancient Mariner being written as if the old sailor were telling it. I also thought about gonna and sorta and all the words Ms. Habis-Jones said were not acceptable in her classroom. This made me want to use them. There is something about Ms. Habis-Jones that makes me feel ornery. Since Dad lost his rig, I feel ornery to the nth degree, as we say in algebra, about almost anything.
    I wrote, “The old man said to the stranger, ‘I gotcha cornered, and I’m gonna tell ya about my dog. Ya gotta listen even if ya don’t wanna. My dog’s coat is sorta rough, but his ears are kinda soft. He knows howta heel. His eyes say, Gimme your attention, gimme your love, gimme a bone. Whatcha think of that? When I walk him, he always hasta lift his leg. Ya oughta see my dog.’ The stranger said, ‘Lemme go. I don’t care aboucher dog.’”
    I had fun writing the